Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 310, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 March 1936 — Page 21

It Seems to Me rail BROUN TV/TAYOR LA GUARDIA finds that there Is an J-YI. emergency affecting the public health cf the City of New York. He refers to the strike of some 70,000 elevator operators. And so he is preparing to have the city itself run the elevators in buildings more than six stories tall. In addition, I believe that this service is to be merely periodical. Nobody is going to argue that sick people should be marooned in tall buildings, but I am by no means

convinced that the Mayor has taken the proper point of view in regard to the emergency of which he speaks. I will not deny the emergency. If I lived on the twenty-fourth floor and was without benefit of elevator service it would have a grave effect upon my life and perhaps upon my temper. At the very least I would cease all nightclubbing and playboying and go in for home-cooked dinners until the last tin of sardines had gone. Os course emergency situations exist under the present strike. There was, for instance, the lady

Hcywood Broun

who discovered that she had left her theater tickets behind her on the twenty-seventh f oor. She did not make the discovery until she had reached the lobby. Perhaps it wasn’t much ol a show, after all, but the lady will never know. She could not bring herself up to scaling the heights again. u n One Bad Effect I AM by no means disposed to minimize the inconvenience of walking up to each particular pueblo. Cocktail parties on even the fifth floor of primitive buildings are no comfort to me. In going out into the world again after the revel has ended the guest usually finds that he has entirely walked himself out of the good effects of the stimulant. Once I had a penthouse 20 stories up, and one night I was suddenly informed that service had been suspended. This was not a strike but “an act of God,” since there was something wrong with the elevator cables. There was no service. And when v/e are talking about emergencies affecting public health why neglect the problem of the operators themselves? lam told that some work as manv as 90 hours for a wage of sls a week. I was myself a tenant in an apartment building where one of the boys averaged PO hours a week. tt a- * Complaints Without Logic WHEN conditions such as that exists it seems to me that the temporary discomfort of turreted tenants should hardly weigh against the permanent needs of the operators. Nor do I say why Mayor La Guardia or anybody else in authority should assume that the present emergency lies at the door of the men and women who run the elevators. How about the men who run the buildings? Why shouldn’t pressure be put on them until an equitable settlement can be achieved? Obviously there is no logic in the complaint of j tenants who protest that the strike was called sud- j denly and without due warning. The surprise ele- I ment is essential in any such move. The operators | would be guilty of the most stupid tactics in the world if they gave the employers every chance to equip themselves with strike breakers. Os course, I live only on the eighth floor myself, but I must admit that as yet no tales of oppression have come in sufficiently harrowing to make me weep for the plight of Park-av. (Copyright, 1936) AAA Will Go Right On Despite Ruling BY RAYMOND CLAI*PER WASHINGTON, March 6.—The driving personality behind the new “soil conservation” program which is replacing AAA is Prof. Howard R. Tolley, 46, heavy-shouldered, bald and tough in a good-natured way. Director of the Giannini Foundation and professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Prof. Tolley has spent most of the last three years here as AAA director of

planning. Chester Davis, although continuing as AAA Administrator, has so exhausted his physical energy that he is expected to take it easy for a while. Prof. Tolley’s teammate in the new soil conservation program is Dr. M. L. Wilson, assistant secretary of agriculture, Montana professor-farmer, father of the domestic allotment plan which was the basis of AAA, and for a time assigned to realize Mrs. Roosevelt’s ill-fated dream of subsistence homesteads. tt tt tt

Secretary Wallace's first outline of the new soil conservation program looks as if he is overriding the Supreme Court. The plan is to take 30,000,000 acres out of cash crop production. Ten million of this will come out of cotton. Farmers will be paid for taking their land out of cotton and putting it into'alfalfa, legumes or soil-binding grasses. Because there is a shortage of hogs and no surplus in wheat, crop curtailment will not have to be applied so rigorously there as to cotton. a a a GOVERNMENT employes have been fearful that the scrapping of AAA would throw 5000 or more out of jobs. But AAA will go right on without even changing its initials, treating agriculture as a matter of natonal concern, the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. ana Two years ago Congress instructed the Treasury to buy silver until it had accumulated one-third as much silver as gold or until it forced up the price to $1.29 an ounce. After two years we find that gold has come in faste; than the Treasury could buy silver so that it is farther from the specified ratio than ever. And instead of pushing up the price to $1.29 an ounce, silver is still down at about 45 cents. So the Treasury decides that it will buy up practically the entire Canadian output of silver and probably Will also take all of the silver mined in Latin America. Once there was a man, who, upon staggering into the Keeley Cure, was surprised to be told that while many men had tried to do it. it was a physical impossibility for any one man to drink up all of the liquor in existence. But the government is powerful. Maybe it can buy up all of the silver mined in the world. It would make a very beautiful bright metal pile for tourists to look at. ana ONE big business economist suggests an unexpected method by which the new Roosevelt corporation surplus tax might be sabotaged. Corporations could hold back their dividends, pay the penalty tax, and let the stockholders go without dividends and yell until the tax was repealed . . . Bankers ought to favor the surplus tax. If it had been in effect a few years ago Henry Ford would have been forced into the clutches of Wall Street bankers. He was able to live on his hump through the squeeze and escape ... We hear a great deal about how it the corporations can't hoard great surpluses they wont be able to keep up wages and employment during depressions. The way they did in the last depression?

SANTA CLAUS LAND Albertans Still Await * b jjjapJLgwww -ns- - <&***■**& ss&ggsi&sfis# Six months ago Aug. 22. 19.35—His , j! *y | £> 71 /f .7 TV ssrvasizcant! I 525-a-MonthPayments United States. jj I With evangelical fervor Albertans on I I # n , | 7. r j I .ly ! tn Social Credit Plan positor and local counterpart of Father W¥v 'Jr.;- . 'j Coughlin and Dr. Townsend, on hii t ? j|HY lIP . \ t pledge to pay each adult J 25 monthly % Wf" \ Z : '-Wmtb. ■ — as a ‘-social dividend.” Using Father ?iM -.,V ' & .' (§§?- tF” * ~ ' fffMf /-v^S'C Coughlin's method*. Mr. Aberhart bor- % Wt, \ Sir : 1 l 7 ft*"*"* rowed features of his formula from the i MMf |r As. I Mm to the non-Marxist social agl- j Hl* irlutmt ... pr.dil,.,, tb.rer.r.i ’****'** ® proilnco *nd rtpotl on lh progress o( ■' . ; This, your correspondent, only ' £ I passably informed on Mr. Aber- ® $$ /IT ! hart, Alberta, Social Credit and William Aberhart v. \Y\ ~y>7 \f A- /it jp. ■ Utopia, observed while still on a [ 1 (ft W O jf ■ SIP g train headed for North America's haven’t drawn a sober breath in J j llw 7 \ j „ Santa Claus land. The Transcon- 20 y ears > and they’ll follow any /j (W \ Y l r< ,° zop tinental, bound for Calgary and s f /if L jV \ ot MU*

Six months ago—Aug. 22, 1935 His Majesty's Province of Alberta, Canada, became a political laboratory for the United States. With evangelical fervor Albertans on that date chose as Prime Minister William Aberhart, a schoolmaster, Bible expositor and local counterpart of Father Coughlin and Dr. Townsend, on his pledge to pay each adult J 25 monthly as a “social dividend.” Using Father Coughlin's methods. Mr. Aberhart borrowed features of his formula from the Townsend Plan. Akin to the non-Marxist social agitators in this country, Mr. Aberhart alone holds power in and over a state. His reforms and promises, therefore, may be checked in acticn. Believing that Alberta's experience may be highly instructive to Americans, the Scripps-Howard Newspapers assigned Forrest Davis, staff writer, to visit that province and report on the progress of Mr. Aberhart’s experiment. His first dispatch follows: BY FORREST DAVIS Scripps-Hi- .ard Staff Writer Alta., March 6.—ln Canada the $25-a-month adult subsidy proposed—but not yet granted —by the Hon. William Aberhart, Fundamentalist lay preacher and His Majesty’s Social Credit Premier of Alberta, seems to be a fighting word. Asa conversational irritant Mr. Aberhart is the Dominion’s New Deal-Lib-erty League- CoughlinTownsend - Talmadge - Sin-clair-Long rolled into one prickly ball. This, your correspondent, only passably informed on Mr. Aberhart, Alberta, Social Credit and Utopia, observed while still on a train headed for North America’s Santa Claus land. The Transcontinental, bound for Calgary and eventually the coast, had been shouldering its way across the prairies with impressive self-con-fidence against a blizzard rawpelting down out of the MacKenzie. Without warning the express stalled somewhere in Manitoba. Outside the club car’s triple, frosted windows the prairie, obscurely gray, resembled the fagend of an ice age. Drifts, it turned out, had blockaded a cut. We were miles from any town and might be detained several hours. # tt u IT would be hell,” said the blond girl from Australia, whose green knitted sports costume barely covered her knees, “to be marooned out here all night.” Few of the dozen passengers smiled. All agreed. The talk went on, a bit apprehensively—about the new King’s entertaining capers when, as the Prince, he visited Canada; about the storm, the hard winter, etc. The passengers spoke quietly, and only one voice rose above the relative hush. The grain dealer from Regina, a square-rigged man, from blunttoed boots to closely cut hair, was grappling a cigar and emphatically discussing “conditions” with his neighbor. “I tell you,” he declaimed angrily, “if ‘Abie’ don’t begin shoving out his $25 a month pretty soon he’ll be done for.’” “Abie” is, obviously, a diminutive for Mr. Aberhart. “He’ll be murdered, I tell you,” continued the Regina man. “There’s too many foreigners, Ukrainians; and too many Yanks in that Province. They’re desperate —they want that money . . . and they’ll get the money or Aberhart, one or the other.” a tt u THE passengers turned alertly toward the Regina man. His neighbor, an Englishman unsuitably dressed in slacks and tweed jacket, a little man with the look of a resigned but faintly disturbed fox. sat up sharply. “But, see here,” he said. “I live in Calgary. I’ve only been over on the other side for six months. Alberta has respect for law and order.’ In New York I had heard the Regina man's prediction ventured earlier by eastern Canadians. “Money don’t grow on trees,” the Regina man appealed to the other passengers. The men nodded agreement. No other talk was going on now, and the girl from Australia put down her magazine. Only the Vancouver bank manager reached for the flimsy sheets of stock market quotations offered by the steward. A trainman, fthose lean features might have been etched and rimed by Jack Frost himself, came in from the observation platform to announce that it was 28 below. His audience was only mildly interested. * tt a tt “'T'HE trouble with Alberta is A that the farmers are shiftless. Unstable, too, I know; I’m a farmer as a sideline.” The Regina man was warming to his subject. “They're politically drunk;

Clapper

BENNY

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mi t i* t* m* The Indianapolis Times

haven’t drawn a sober breath in 20 years, and they’ll follow any Moses that springs up out of the brush and promises them something for nothing. “Take my farms in Saskachewan, 3800 acres of level wheatland all under cultivation. I bought it in 1906 at a fair price. We’ve had four or five bad years,

WASHINGTON, March 6. Elliott Roosevelt, second son of the President, is going into the broadcasting business on a big scale. He has. just acquired options to buy three radio stations, WACO at Waco, Texas; KTAT at Fort Worth, and KOMA at Oklahoma City, all a part of the Southwest Broadcasting System. tt tt tt THE problem of government loans to private industry once again has been put on the President’s desk and is receiving serious attention. Reason for revival of interest is the fact that allfthe Administration’s ballyhoo regarding loans to industry has produced actual advances of only $78,000,000. And Congress had authorized the lending of $580,000,000. Approximately half was to be loaned through the Federal Reserve banks and about half through the Reconstruction Finance Corp. But, despite the easing of collateral requirements by Congress last year, most of these millions have been lying idle in RFC and Federal Reserve strongboxes. In the files of Reserve banks are close to 8000 loan applications. The total approved to date is sfightly over 2000. A similar situation exists in the RP’C. tt tt tt I AST summer Dr. Jacob Viner, •’ special assistant to Secretary Morgenthau, made an extended, study of the situation and filed a report sharply criticising the elaborate red-tape necessary before applicants obtain a loan. He found that sometimes the cost of obtaining a loan was almost as much as the amount sought. Despite Viner’s reproofs nothing was done until recently, when a bill was introduced in Congress to establish an independent “bank” for small loans to industry. With business men and members of Congress displaying keen interest in the plan, the White House began to take notice. At its request the Treasury has taken the matter under advisement again. tt tt tt UNNOTICED in the crowd that surged around the entrance of the Harvard Fly Club to see the President the other night was a typical O. Henry character, a human derelict. He arrived too late to see Roosevelt come in and so stood there for two hours in the bitter cold, not moving an inch. He was so nondescript that police and Secret Service men did not bother him. although every one else finally was excluded from the area. When the President emerged, he stepped forward to speak to a girl stricken with paralysis. Simu-

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1936

but I was thrifty in good years. I only drew out 12 per cent for myself; left the rest in there as a reserve. “I used to have to keep 75 head

Washington Merry-Go-Round BY DREW PEARSON and ROBERT S. ALLEN

taneously the old fellow pressed forward to shake his hand, but was shoved back. He went away muttering: “They pushed me back. I was going to shake his hand, but they pushed me back. Greatest President since Lincoln, but they pushed me back.” tt tt tt YOU can play the “numbers” in the United States Capitol without going out of the building. There is a “runner” in the Senate restaurant who will take your bet any day in the week. . . . Sightseers in the new Supreme Court

Lobby Investigators Hint at Startling Developments

BY RUTH FINNEY Times Special Writer WASHINGTON, March 6. Members of the Senate Lobby Committee suggested today that their critics wait until they see the contents of seized telegrams before" deciding whether the seizure was justified. The committee men hinted at startling revelations to come. For one thing they have evidence that an organization never publicly identified with utility interests was working with the utilities last year against the Wheeler-Ray-burn bill. Republican members of the Lobby Committee are as stanch in their defense of the investigation as are Democrats in the face of widespread attacks on the “pillage” of telegraph files. Senator Gibson (R., Vt.) said today that the attack on the committee’s subpena powers was nothing but politics. “I’m on that committee to do my duty regardless of who is hurt,” he said. “I’ve no patience with people who put party politics above public welfare.” said the attack on the committee is being led by Republican newspapers—a claim which Chairman Black (D., Ala.) emphasized on the Senate floor. tt tt tt THE published list of persons and firms whose telegrams have been supenaed by the committee can for the most part be connected in some manner, with utilities, with steamship companies or with the American Liberty League. The name of Crew Levick appears repeatedly on the list, and a number of the individuals’ named are oi l'icers or employes of that organization. Crew Levick is a subsidiary of Cities Service, and the lobby committee disclosed yesterday that its employes had been instructed to solicit letters to congressmen against the-Wheeler-Rayburn bill. The committee produced ques-

of horses. It took 400 acres to raise the feed for them. Cost me 8 to 12 cents a bushel to harvest. Now, with tractors ana combines, I can harvest for a cent a bushel.

Building often ask if this is the place where the NRA was declared unconstitutional. The answer is No; then they trek across to the Capitol Building to gaze at the old courtroom. ... At a recent session of the House, Rep. Palmisano of Maryland fell asleep in his chair. . . . The new government of Paraguay has discharged the country’s diplomats in foreign capitals. Enrique Bordenave, able minister in Washington, got no salary for February, has to pay his own passage home. (Copyright. 1936, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

tionnaires returned to it by Crew Levick officials in which they denied possessing letters, telegrams or records on the subject. They changed their testimony after committee investigators obtained copies of messages from telegraph companies. Company officials all testified they had destroyed their records in incinerators. “So the only way this committee could find out about what you were doing was to get records from the telegraph companies, wasn’t it?” Senator Black asked witness after witnesss. They all agreed. t: tt tt SENATOR BLACK anticipated the present attack in an article written for the February issue of Harper’s. “Whenever a congressional committee inspects the so-called private papers of a corporation official the cry goes up that this is an outrageous invasion of the rights of private citizens,” he wrote. “There are always plenty of newspaper apologists to join in the indignant protest. “Slowly business executives have built up the fiction that they have a right to enjoy some special privilege of secrecy. And under our present corporation laws, by which men operate through the mazes of numerous corporations, nothing short of a congressional inquiry can penetrate the activities of these men. “The controversy has brought forth many legal arguments, filled many pages of parliamentary records, evoked multitudinous editorial protests, and sent many recalcitrants to prison. Notwithstanding this continuous opposition, the House and Senate have uniformly sustained the right of their committees to obtain such evidence since the first congressional investigation was ordered by the House in 1792. The courts have upheld them.”

IW he rm i rw. i

THE Englishman interrupted. “Perhaps that’s part of the trouble in Alberta—technological unemployment,” he offered. He added, crisply, that the Alberta farmers were no less competent than those in Saskatchewan; that he had studied economics at London University and dared say he understood the hopelessness that prompted last August’s uprising in Aberhart’s favor. While it was true that his wife, who had a bit of money, had sold out and gone back to England, still . . . A woman’s voice cut flatly across his monologue. A hearty, redfaced, intelligent-looking woman, well tailored, spoke. “Listen, you men,” she said, “I grew up in Alberta. My father sold cut a hardware business in Devon, England, to bring his family out here to the ‘last best West.’ He had money. He bought a lot of land and built good buildings and bought good stock. “He and my five brothers farm five sections (3200 acres) of fertile land outside Lloydminster. Last year hail and frost got their crop. I doubt if any one of the six handled SSO in cash all year. Its been almost as bad for four years.” tt tt tt “T DON’T mean to say, lady, that JL there ain’t some good farmers in Alberta,” the Regina man apologized. “Obviously not,” she retorted. The male passengers chuckled. “I married down East. Live there. I’ve lost touch with Alberta, but I know the farmers, the foreigners, yes and Yanks, too,” she smiled, “aren't much different than they were—only more broke and more hopeless. All my brothers voted for Aberhart. My father didn’t. I advised him against it; I think it’s an impossible dream. But my brothers aren’t thugs, nor unstable, and they’re damned good farmers” . . . “Hear, hear,” said the Englishman. “But Aberhart’s an imposter, promising manna from Heaven he knows he can’t distribute,” put in the bank manager from Vancouver. “Very likely,” said the woman. I don’t know anything about his sincerity. But 111 be curious to hear why my brothers voted for him.” tt tt tt THE Regina man murmured inconseqeuntly to his neighbor: "My farms have been mighty sweet to me.” The conversation broke up into excited segments. Mr. Aberhart, it wasTcontended, is a red radical, a Bolshevik, who intends setting up state socialism; he is a religious fanatic, who would ruin Alberta; and, worst of all, a menace to the empire who might possibly meditate secession. It was agreed that the deluded Albertans never would collect their $25 a month. Presently the pass was cleared of snow and the Transcontinental plowed ahead to Calgary, where the answers might, presumably, be found. In tomorrow’s article Forrest Davis describes the physical setting for Aberhart’s proposed Utopia.

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

Entered tn Second-Class Ma'ter at Postoffire, Indianapolis, lnd.

Washington ROW WITCHER (Batting for Westbrook Pegler) VI/'ASHINGTON, March 6.—Many politicians have “pasts” which provide some good reading in election years. Both parties employ trained diggers to unearth the dirt. For instance, there are some of Roosevelt’s utterances as Governor of New York which you might compare with some of his statements and actions as President. Anti-New Dealers have dug up plenty of :hem, especially those concerning state '

rights and Federal encroachment, government spending and credit. And no end of diggers, not forgetting A1 Smith, have exhumed and dusted off that hoary old document, the Democratic platform of 1932. It works both ways, of course, and you would have to go far to beat that trio of diggers for the Democratic national committee— Emil Hurja. Charlie Michelson and Eddie Roddan. Voting records usually provide good pickings. Thus, when Chairman Farley was going to make a

speech in New England and discuss the charge that F. D. R. had flagrantly violated the platform pledge to cut Federal expenses 25 per cent, his diggers gave him munitions in the fact that when Congress smashed the economy act over the President’s veto, six of the seven Republican Senators of New England had voted to restore full veterans’ benefits. Such celebrated G. O. P. representatives as Mrs. Rogers, Treadway and Martin of Massachusetts had joined them. tt tt tt Blood of the W. C. T. U. T'VOSSIERS are being compiled on the various A-J presidential candidates. Democratic plotters say they have various quotations from Gov. Landon of Kansas in which he indorsed -large gobs of the New Deal. They claim they can embarrass him in Eastern cities by dry speeches of his past, including such an alleged remark as “The blood of the W. C. T. U. flows in my veins”—although, of course, a lot of us boys could say that. One of the things you can find in the record if you like is an instance where A1 Smith was threatening to take a spectacular “walk” many years ago. It was at the Democratic state convention in Syracuse, N. Y., in 1920, when Boss Charley Murphy of Tammany was in full control. Smith had been okayed for the Democratic nomination. tt tt tt They’re Together Now WTTHOUT Smith’s knowledge, Murphy patched up a peace with William Randolph Hearst, who had been attacking him unmercifully for years, and promised to have Hearst nominated for the United States Senate. But Hearst had made scathing attacks on Smith, too. “No!” shouted A1 to Murphy. “I won’t run on any ticket with him. If Hearst is on, I’m off; if I’m on, he’s off.” Smith threatened to take the floor of the convention and denounce the Tammany ticket. Murphy capitulated and Hearst didn’t go “on.” Today Smith and Hearst are on the same side in a bond of opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal. (Copyright, 1936, by NEA Service, Inc.)

Gen. Johnson Says—

WASHINGTON, March 6.—Yesterday this column showed the compulsions to extravagance in having the Federal government tax the people of the states, and then, through WPA, redistribute the proceeds as pretended “gifts” to the states. There is another compulsion to extravagance in WPA. How should relief be dispensed—as ostensible wages for unnecessary results at grossly extravant cost, or directly to make every dollar go as far as possible to succor human suffering? WPA says the former, and insists that no other plan will be tolerated or even debated. It admits that direct relief would cost half as much—that every dollar could go twice as far. It complains that there is not half enough money to relieve necessitous distress. We spend two billions. For the tax payer that “intolerance” cost him a cool billion For the destitute, it starves half of them. It merits a little debate. Its reasons are: That direct contributions would demoralize the recipients, and that they and the country would resent it. tt tt a THAT is a preposterous billion-dollar conjecture. Do ex-soldiers resent their bonus, the G. A. R.’s their pensions, the farmers their “benefits” for not producing, our industries their tariff, the Townsendites their proposed S2OO a month, the Eritish unemployed their dole—or anybody, anywhere, anytime, a public bounty? Incredible nonsense! All this is beside the point. The right to decide that question does not rest with the rhapsodists of WPA but with the two classes concerned—thq tax payers and the destittue. This problem should go where, under our Immemorial tradition, it belongs, and where, by the Democratic platform, it was promised—to the states, supplemented by Federal credit where state resources faiji. Then the people in each state who pay and receive can decide what form relief should take. The Federal government has neither right nor responsibility here. (Copyright, 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Times Books

TO read “Freedom, Farewell!” by Phyllis Bentley (MacMillan; $2.59), is to relive your high school days—those days when you were translating Caesar's Commentaries, studying Roman history, and reading Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and getting all three gaily confused in the process. For this is one of those historical novels in which people like Caesar. Pompey, Brutus, Mark Antony, and Cassius go stalking about saying. “By Hercules!” and acting more or less as if they had got lost out of a road show company of “Ben-Hur.” However, Miss Bentley has brought it up to date by presenting the problem of ancient Rome as a problem of today. The slow decline and death of the Roman republic was, after all, much like the decline and death of free government in many lands today, and Miss Bentley pursues the parallel intelligently. ana THEN, as now, was a rich and stupid upper class, a set of talkative but inactive liberals, and a confused, miseiable, and discontented proletariat; and out of this mixture came the death of parliamentary institutions and the birth of the dictatorship of the Caesars. And, as you follow Miss Bentley’s account of the Roman republic’s death, you can not help translating the whole story into modem terms. Judged purely as entertainment, the novel is a bit dull. But its value as a historical object lesson will probably keep you reading until you have finished it. And after that you will do some thinking. (By Bruce Catton.) 4, \

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Rodney Dutchcr